


seasons, changes

by the_pen_is_mightier



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Feelings, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, Softness, South Downs Cottage, They love each other, atmosphere, getting married, getting used to their new lives, season vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-17 01:23:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21045992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_pen_is_mightier/pseuds/the_pen_is_mightier
Summary: In the autumn Aziraphale and Crowley go out apple picking.





	seasons, changes

In the autumn Aziraphale and Crowley go out apple picking. 

It’s the first time they’ve ever done something so simple, so easy together, with no fear of punishment. They hold hands as they browse through trees low-hanging with ripe red fruit, and Crowley points out the shiniest, the most tempting. Aziraphale plucks it from its overwrought bough and sinks white teeth into red skin, and Crowley thinks he looks like a painting, a vision, far more divine than ever before. Aziraphale smiles and says a taste like this is worth original sin. Crowley can’t help it - he wraps his arms around Aziraphale, kissing the sweetness from his lips, those easy, flowing words that tell Crowley _it’s over, this war. It’s finally over._

In the autumn they bring baskets of fruit home and make pies and cobblers and cakes, and invite Warlock and Adam and their friends over to taste them when they’re ready. They set a pumpkin outside the bookshop’s doorstep for Halloween. They watch the trees change color from the windows of their flats, always with their fingers intertwined, together. They smile at the thought that the world is still going. 

Music gets sweeter when the air gets colder. They spend time in silence, just listening to old songs they haven’t heard in decades or centuries, and some new songs, too. Then Aziraphale begins to sing, softly at first, humming as he reshelves books, then louder when Crowley says he loves hearing the angel’s heaven-gold voice. Crowley, for his part, learns to play the guitar. He stays up long hours into the night working out the complicated patterns on his ages-old fingers, which look young enough but still resist the birth of something new within them. Aziraphale is there with him, watching him, sometimes singing along to the simple tunes Crowley plays. Sometimes their musics combine and Crowley feels transported, swept away on a tide of something he can’t name. He’s never entered an autumn with so much hope before. 

Winds start to blow into London, chilling the streets, and gray clouds descend from the pale blue skies. Aziraphale and Crowley hold each other closer. Aziraphale knits a sweater for Crowley, crimson as his hair, and Crowley nearly cries. Emotions feel larger when the trees are so bright. Crowley leans his forehead against Aziraphale’s and says _I love you, I love you, I love you,_ like the phrase is too large to be contained in his chest and must be spoken. Aziraphale draws it gently out of him, whispering the secret of his own love against Crowley’s lips. 

Autumn is a time for yearning, and so sometimes they lie on their backs and stare at the ceiling and yearn for each other, think of each other, let their hearts burn again for a little while. When they’ve had enough they turn and fold into each other’s arms. Leaves drift from brittling boughs outside the window. They pay no mind. 

__

In the winter they make snow angels. Frozen air sweeps down the clouds, which land in mounds of soft whiteness that glitter in winter’s newborn sun. Aziraphale urges Crowley outside, and they wrap themselves up in hats and gloves and scarves and track through the drifts, breath misting in front of them, letting the crisp, clean air fill their lungs.

Aziraphale flings a hastily made snowball at Crowley, who collapses as if he’s been injured; when Aziraphale hurries over to him, horrified, he grabs the angel and pulls him down into the snow. They tussle for only a moment, giggles echoing through the emptiness of this newmade world, before Aziraphale, huffing with effort, yanks Crowley to his feet again and they go on. They build a snowman, they sled down a hill, they kiss each other in the brightness like it’s their first time - they feel young again, not like the lovestruck fools who left Eden but like the children they were when the heavens were first created. Before the Fall, before the seven days, before the apple. They feel like creation has restarted. A little more right, this time.

In winter the weather’s tight, freezing fist is combatted on all sides by Christmas lights strung up in windows, and warm, brightly colored clothes, and rich food whose smell wafts from every door. Friends come to the bookshop for large dinners. Crowley and Aziraphale welcome them together, and loud, rowdy conversation rises through the rooftop to the sky, reaching upward to the celestial multitudes in Heaven and down to the creeping masses in Hell, proclaiming their freedom from both. When everyone else goes home the two of them curl up beside each other and watch movies, hands brushing together over popcorn bowls, kissing salt from off each other’s fingertips. Aziraphale reads while Crowley sleeps. Then Aziraphale begins to sleep, some nights, as well. 

Crowley has never loved winter; it’s usually the time of year when Hell’s dreary dampness begins to seep into his bones, chilling him so deeply he wants nothing but to crawl into a little hiding place and wait for spring. It’s usually the season that sees him shuffling through the days remembering the Grace he’s lost, and bitterly demanding of a God he doesn’t know anymore _what did I do wrong? Why am I condemned to this?_

He’s never enjoyed the winter, but these days when he wakes up from a nightmare Aziraphale’s arms are around him, and comfort is so close that he can’t help feeling safe. Love is suffused so thickly through the places he goes that he has no room for despair. The universe looks bright again, the stars gleam against the black winter sky, and Crowley feels he’s beginning to understand something he gave up long ago as lost. 

One night at a large party Crowley halts the dinnertime conversation, holding up his hands for silence, and goes to one knee beside Aziraphale with a ring. Aziraphale nearly knocks him over when he flings his arms around Crowley, and Crowley is tempted to simply pull Aziraphale to the floor and hug him tight and never let go. But there’s the dinner to complete first. When the guests are gone they’ll hold each other all night long. 

Winter is the time for celebration. They finally have something to celebrate, after six thousand years. 

__

In the spring Crowley waves Aziraphale over to his laptop and shows him what he’s been looking at online. It’s a sweet little cottage in the South Downs, big enough for both of them. A perfect place to live out their retirement, Crowley suggests. 

Aziraphale gains a dreamy look, eyes shifting momentarily to the little colorful buds of flowers beginning to bloom outside the window. He says it sounds like an excellent idea. It’ll be a wonderful hideaway for all his unsellable books. And Crowley can take up gardening there, with something more than just his houseplants. 

Crowley grins at the thought. He and his plants are on better terms, these days. They’ve been growing beautifully with almost no threatening at all, since Aziraphale began to inhabit his flat along with him. He hasn’t had to dispose of a single one since the end of the world. He’s beginning to think he won’t do so ever again.

Gentle, warm winds blow away the frigid winter, and the snow melts, replaced with tender stalks of grass and the soft petals of springtime flowers. Spring is a time for busyness, and Aziraphale starts packing his first-editions into boxes, bustling around the shop and picking them out at seemingly random intervals, obeying a pattern only he understands. Crowley watches, helping when he can, distracting Aziraphale when he’s feeling devilish. They talk over lunches and dinners about plans for the wedding, which will occur at the end of May, just on the cusp of the new season. Crowley spends long night hours, this time in secret, writing up the perfect vows, scribbling them out onto scraps of paper only to crumple them up when they don’t feel quite right. Aziraphale knows just what he’s going to say, but he practices saying it every morning, still, when he gets a moment away from Crowley. 

Together they load everything from their London lives into the Bentley (which is miraculously able to fit it all) and drive, and drive, down to a quiet place where the sound of rushing water is louder than that of street traffic or pedestrian babble. They could simply miracle everything inside, but they help each other with the boxes instead, enjoying the weight of books and potted plants, enjoying the strain of old muscles in work toward this goal they’ve chosen as one. Lovingly they put their new home together. They paint it together, too, slopping paint on their hands, smudging it on each other’s faces, laughing uproariously at themselves as they’re reduced to messes by the kind of frivolous work they’ve never bothered to do before. Crowley miracles every stain away from Aziraphale’s clothes, in the end.

The first night they spend there together, they don’t want to go to sleep. They stay up into the wee hours excitedly planning what they’re going to do with the garden, whether they can start up a strawberry patch, where they’ll travel for their honeymoon - they’ve been everywhere in the world, but tradition is tradition, after all. At last they’re too exhausted to keep up the chat, but they wake early the next morning, ready, ready as the spring sun beams through their windows. 

The world wakes in spring. It’s never seemed so enthusiastic before, so optimistic. Crowley has never felt so ready to meet the rest of his life.

__

Summer descends hot after the wedding is done. After Crowley stumbles through the latest draft of his vows, and Aziraphale reduces Crowley to tears with his, flawlessly delivered, and they kiss - and it crashes over them all over again, the wonder, the glory of being _allowed_, of being _permitted_, of being _free_, the agonizing relief of unfettered closeness, and they can’t take their eyes off of each other for the rest of the day. They travel the world for a while, and then they return to the cottage, and then summer sets in.

They slow down from the spring, and they reflect. Summer is the time for quiet happiness, for satisfaction, for gratitude, and Aziraphale and Crowley have much to be grateful for. One night over dessert Crowley brings up that this time last year, they were still preparing for when Warlock came into his full power. They were staring down the jaws of Armageddon, and they were almost positive all their work was going to be for nothing - that there was no way of stopping the Antichrist, and that they were going to be forced apart again, forced into battle against each other. Only a year ago that was all the future they could see.

Crowley asks if Aziraphale really would have done it - rejoined Heaven’s ranks and marched out to fight him. Aziraphale does not smile. He’s grown more honest, this past year. He says, quietly, that he’s not sure. But if he had, he’d never have been able to forgive himself. Crowley nods. Aziraphale turns the question back on him, and Crowley is just as honest - no, he’s sure he never would have fought for Hell. He’d have escaped, or he’d have let them kill him, before taking up arms against Aziraphale.

Aziraphale is not overwhelmed by the words. He’s come to know, to understand, by now, just how fully and deeply and desperately he’s loved. It doesn’t shock him. Instead of breaking down, he simply reaches out and takes Crowley’s hand, and tells him he’s good, he’s so good, he’s wonderful and brave and compassionate and selfless. And Crowley, who’s learned a thing or two himself this past year, doesn’t contradict him. He smiles. He lets himself be content in this world and in the love of this beautiful angel, and he lets himself believe he deserves it. 

Summer is a time for easy things. They settle into a comfortable routine, here in this cottage at the beginning of the world. Cocoa and tea in the morning. A newspaper that’s read slowly and deliberately, cover to cover. A vegetable patch that needs tending, a fresh bouquet of flowers to pick for the table, a stack of books to be read and annotated. Long drives in the country, Aziraphale learning to enjoy the freedom of speed; serene picnics under the lazy sky, Crowley feeding Aziraphale little bits of cheese and sausage with greasy fingers. Aziraphale braiding Crowley’s hair, weaving wildflowers into it, kissing his neck when he sweeps the long locks aside. A welcoming home to return to when the sky begins to dim. 

Autumn will come soon enough. The cold wind will blow in again, and it will be time for apple-picking. Crowley can’t wait to watch Aziraphale be tempted by the fruit of humanity all over again. He can’t wait for music to stir his soul in the way it only does when flame lights the treetops, and he can’t wait to make pies and invite the children over to eat them, and he can’t wait to discover the year once more with his love.

These seasons taste like hope. It’s been a very long time in coming.

**Author's Note:**

> Like my content? Find my on tumblr @whatawriterwields!


End file.
